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Longinos Nagila - Kenya
Images which are produced by small, patient cuts
Longinos Nagila is an artist who loves experimenting with different artistic languages and likes challenging himself by moving from the known to the lesser known, in a personal research that does not exclude the audience, but rather invites them to self-examination.
We could speak of both technical and intellectual experimentation: through the repetition of the act of cutting and the surprise of seeing images appearing from the layers of paper, the artist experiences a sort of estrangement, a mantra that prompts him to re!ect on the multiple meanings of the concept of art itself, questioning the conventions and assumptions on which we base our aesthetic judgements.
Nagila describes his pieces as "assemblages", a different way of making collages, a graphic adventure.
The aesthetic result, elegant and minimal, forces the audience's eye to go beyond the two-dimensionality, through small windows, carefully raised, in order to bring light to the image, in the contrast of different colours.
The shape is presented to the audience’s eye, divided into segment through lines created by cuts in basic geometries, capable of triggering emotions and stimulating, conceptually, a process of reduction to the essential.
An intimate approach, a slow journey, a commitment to what is really important.
The public is forced to turn their gaze to have a better perspective of the image, and they do so between the layers of paper, which is in itself an artistic object. In the words of the artist: "paper has its own autonomy and all the assembled materials are themselves bearers of a particular meaning"
Beatrice Polato
From this Exhibition
Publications & Press
Nagila turns geometry pieces into fine art Margaretta wa Gacheru - BUSINESS DAILY